Kevin Hunt: Grace's Internet radios, no computer

Kevin Hunt, Tribune Newspapers

In a holiday rush, where do you go for an instant "Jingle Bells" variety-pack playlist with Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Brad Paisley and, for that special moment, Alvin and the Chipmunks?

Or seasonal favorites streamed from Barbuda, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein and Vanuatu?

Straight to the Internet, of course. This holiday season, though, many people will leave their computers and laptops for stand-alone Internet devices that look like traditional radios but tap into the thousands of streaming-music stations around the world.

Among the candidates are two from Grace Digital Audio, a just-out table radio (GDI-IR2550P, $170) and a component tuner (GDI-IRDT200, $220). Each offers access to more than 50,000 Internet stations and podcasts, roll-your-own Pandora stations, for-hire services like Sirius and, over your home network, the entire music library stored on your computer.

The only requirement is Internet access, preferably Wi-Fi, so the radio can be placed anywhere, just like old-style radios. The table radio, with its built-in speaker and multiple alarms, will likely reside in a kitchen, den or on a bedroom nightstand. The component tuner, which has no speaker, belongs in a stereo or home-theater system.

Grace's radios use the Reciva Internet Radio chipset and its vast library of Internet stations, but the tiny, antiquated four-line, monochromatic display is difficult to read.

That's one of the reasons I still prefer Logitech's Squeezebox Radio, even though it might be the buggiest of the buggy Internet radios, because of its bigger, iPod-like full-color display. Grace calls the table radio the only tabletop with one-button control of Pandora's thumbs-up, thumbs-down and play-pause features.

The Livio Radio (livioradio.com), a more attractive, retro-style table radio with the Reciva chipset, lacks only Pandora's play/pause, a feature whose usefulness merits no special exclamation points from this user.

The Grace's tiny screen, empty-box feel (it weighs only 3 pounds), block-icon controls, flimsy scroll/select dial and average sound from the 4-inch speaker do not make a good first impression.

It's a distinct step back from the previous Grace Internet radio I auditioned, the portable Wi-Fi-only Allegro.

A remote control helps — the Squeezebox Radio's remote is part of an extra-cost accessory package — but this otherwise mundane package is revitalized by a new iPhone/iPod Touch remote control application. This is a full remote-control app, from on/off to scrolling through station presets, a "my history" of recent station visits, volume adjustments, scheduling up to five alarms and skipping from Internet radio to Pandora to home-network media sharing.

The virtual remote — a polished app, even if it is susceptible to freezes and crashes — resolves the biggest weakness of the component tuner. With Touch in hand, I could bypass the tuner's sluggish user interface and no longer strain to see the tiny screen.

The component tuner aims much higher than the table model. The serious listener will like digital-audio options (Toslink and digital coaxial) for one-cable connection to a home-theater's audio-video receiver or to an external digital-to-analog converter to further upgrade the tuner's sound quality.

For standard, low-bit-rate Internet streaming, the digital connection probably won't help sound quality much. But music stored on USB drives or SD cards is welcome.

Grace also built in a standard, over-the-air FM tuner that, even with a simple wire antenna, immediately stands out as an upgrade from an audio-video receiver's tuner.

One feature worth noting: From a cold start to locking in a John Coltrane station in My Pandora took 32 seconds, which included connecting to the home network. Activating a "wireless standby" feature, which leaves the Internet connection in always-on mode, reduced the startup time to 7 seconds.

I'd still take the Logitech Sqeezebox Radio and the Livio models over the Grace table radio, but the component radio will make a nice gift-wrapped addition to any home theater looking for a bigger share of the networked world.

The picture looks bright if you are on the receiving end of a new broadcast television streaming service. Streams of live television networks originating from Los Angeles and a variety of international channels remain on filmon.com during a lawsuit filed by TV networks, including ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox, that called the rebroadcast of their signals illegal and in violation of copyrights.

The product: Filmon.com, which claims to be the first live broadcast TV high-def stream for free across your phone, laptop and just about any device with an Internet connection.

The pitch: An effort to entice customers into a $9.95 package for TV streams on the month-and-a-half-old Web startup. We tested filmon.com as instructed on an iPad, BlackBerry and an iPhone to see how it works.

The trial: There is no app involved. Instead, filmon.com directs you to log on to its Web site via your portable device's browser. In a matter of seconds, you should be able to watch every major television network in great clarity. There is no special software to download unless you want to watch TV on a PC and laptop.

The verdict: Wow. Filmon.com performed extremely well. There were moments when either the service or my wireless connection caused the video to freeze, but other video streaming services could take cues from the design, which made it easy to tune into a number of programs for free. I wish the service was not enmeshed in a legal fight, because this is how you would wish to watch TV on the go.